Waza GTM brain

Waza provides cross-border payments and foreign currency liquidity to emerging market businesses paying global suppliers.

category

B2B cross-border payments and treasury

market profile

  • text: Businesses in emerging markets face constrained access to hard currency, regulatory complexity and transaction fees.
  • text: Waza emerged from stealth with equity and debt financing to address African business payment and liquidity needs.

personas

  • title: CFO or treasury lead at an importing company
    pains:
    • Securing dollars to pay overseas suppliers
    • Unpredictable exchange rates, fees and settlement delays disrupt cash planning
  • title: Accounts payable or finance operations manager
    pains:
    • Reconciling multiple cross-border invoices and payment channels
    • Tracking supplier payments across markets
  • title: Fintech product or payments lead
    pains:
    • Building international payment connectivity and liquidity into a customer product

icp

  • text: Importers and multinational businesses trading across Africa and other emerging markets, from sole importers to enterprises.
  • text: Fintech platforms requiring APIs for global payments are a secondary customer segment.

message pillars

  • text: Reach international suppliers in major currencies.
  • text: Improve access to foreign currency.
  • text: Lower cross-border payment friction and costs.

objections

  • objection: Can you reliably source currency and settle our supplier payments?
    response: Review supported corridors, liquidity, settlement commitments and pilot transaction performance with Waza.
  • objection: How do rates and fees compare to our bank?
    response: Request a quote for actual currencies, volumes and corridors and compare the complete landed cost.

competitors

  • name: AZA Finance
    why: Offers cross-border business payments and foreign exchange in African markets.
  • name: Verto
    why: Provides business currency exchange and international payments.
  • name: Conduit
    why: Competes in cross-border business payments infrastructure.

influencers

  • name: Maxwell Obi
    url: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/19/waza-comes-out-of-stealth-with-8m-to-power-global-trade-for-african-businesses/
    why: Co-founder and CEO interviewed on Waza's positioning.

keywords

  • Africa business international payments
  • pay overseas suppliers in USD
  • emerging market foreign exchange liquidity
  • cross border B2B payments
  • business treasury Africa
  • international supplier payment API

voice

  • Clear and pragmatic
  • Global commerce oriented
  • Emphasizes speed and transparency

signals

  • text: An importer expanding overseas supplier relationships has a recurring need for hard currency and settlement.
  • text: A fintech launching cross-border business payments may need payment rails and liquidity.

stack

  • Payment APIs

pricing

model: unknown

motion

hybrid

channels

  • sales
  • SEO
  • LinkedIn
  • press

confidence

high

Founders

  • name: Maxwell Obi
    title: Founder
    role: Founder
    bio: Maxwell is a 2x founder and experienced FinTech entrepreneur. Before Waza, he served as the Global Head of Business at Sendwave (W12) - which got acquired by Worldremit for $500M. While there he navigated partnerships and regulatory relationships in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Prior to that, he was the Co-founder of Amplify, a Nigeria-based FinTech which got acquired by Carbon in 2019. Maxwell has a background in Software Engineering and holds a Degree in Computer Science.
  • name: Emmanuel Igbodudu
    title: Founder
    role: Founder
    bio: Emmanuel is a software engineer with strong experience building financial technology products. Betore Waza, he was a senior engineer at Revolut in London helping to build the vaults product. Prior to Revolut he had held leading roles at Fairmoney, Carbon and TeamApt (now Moneypoint)

Back to YC companies